


The Fourth

by Josette_Mynx



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-09 07:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josette_Mynx/pseuds/Josette_Mynx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A set of shorts from Jamie's perspective as he is exiled to Winterfell by the Dragon Queen and his relationship with Sansa Stark while he helps her deal with her past as he comes to terms with his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How it started

                He doesn't like it. He knows he has been spared the fate of Cersei, but he doesn't know at what cost. The dragon queen has little love for him, and he is sure any love his brother felt has dried up with the corpse of their father. It doesn't take too long to find out though, as Tyrion has apparently summoned him.

                "She was a pretty little thing the last time you saw her, she has turned out quite beautifully."

                "You are joking." Jamie replies sharply.

                "I owe her, the Lannisters owe her. And this is the one thing I can give her." Tyrion waves a hand through the air and then lifts his goblet to swirl the contents. "I annulled our marriage almost a year ago when we found her in the Eyrie, it seems that she has just lost her most recent husband, and has no want to remarry and deal with those obligations. The northerners won't stand for that though, a female leader of the north must be wed."

                "And you think I am the one for the job? I have no intention of touching-"

                "You don't have to touch the girl, in fact that is quite the point. Thus why she won't marry a northern lord."

                Jamie blinks.

                "What a wonderful story it will make. The handsome knight betraying his villainous family for the love of a beautiful young woman." Tyrion smiles, and there is something twinkling in his green eye that Jamie cannot place. "You can play that role can't you brother?"

                "And who is to say the northerners want me to play that role?" Jamie frowns, they have little love for him, he remembers. While now the time spent in that cage is not the worst that has happened to him since all this madness began (his hand, his sisters betrayal, Brienne's corpse hanging from the tree), it was far from the best. But presuming to marry their winter rose might be pushing his luck.

                "They don't particularly. But they will put up with it for her sake I believe."

                Tyrion stands up from his chair and waddles over to him before handing him a piece of paper. It has the royal seal on it. Dragons in red wax.

                "Not to mention her grace has exiled you from the south, so it seems that Winterfell is probably the most comfortable place I can send you off to."

                Jamie frowns but nods, taking the paper in his hands, fighting the part of him that wants to crush it in his fist. Tyrion sees the white on his knuckles and chuckles knowingly.


	2. Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A set of shorts from Jamie's perspective as he is exiled to Winterfell by the Dragon Queen and his relationship with Sansa Stark while he helps her deal with her past as he comes to terms with his.

                It is bloody cold. He had to remove the golden hand, along with all the other metal he wore days ago. The leather armor he wears is something that he isn't as used to, and it isn't near as well put together. Scraps that his northern escort had pulled together for him.

                He feels more like a prisoner with them than the future lord of Winterfell. He imagines they like it that way. He has pretended he doesn't hear what they say, and that seems to rattle them even more. Some of them knew him before. The man he is now seems to unsettle them.

                All except the bastard. Jon Snow. Not the bastard they thought he was, but still a bastard. Refused a crown, but still not a crow, though he doesn't know how he managed to get himself out of those vows. All Jamie knows is that he is one of Sansa's personal guard.

                Her guard is small. The burned Loras Tyrell is a member.  He was surprised at first, but Winterfell would have no reminders of Renly, and house Tyrell has all but fallen in the wake of the dragons. Tyrion's former squire, the Payne boy is one as well. He knows there was a fourth. The one the winter rose married, and the one who recently died, but the northerners will not speak of him and every time they seem about to Snow quiets them with a look.

                Jon doesn't speak to anyone unless he directly is addressed, which is rarely except when the men ask for orders. The boy is colder than the winter and there is something about him that keeps everyone at a distance. Something not right, that is only set off more by the presence of the hulking white wolf that follows close behind.  It was only a few days after they entered the north that Jamie noticed the air doesn't fog around Jon Snows mouth when he shouts orders to the men, or at anytime at all.

                Perhaps the dead cannot be crows.

                At one time perhaps he would have been terrified by the revelation, but now he can hardly bring himself to care. Part of him feels as if he is walking to his death, perhaps Snow can share his secret with him.

                He thought it would be Cersie's death that would put out the fire in him. Instead he rarely thinks on her anymore. It is Brienne's open dead eyes, the peculiar angle of her neck, and the sway of her hair in the breeze as a crow lands on her shoulder to inspect the newest addition to the tree, that haunts him at night.

                Perhaps this trip will finally fulfill that undone quest.

                Perhaps he is more like his father than he would have thought.

                A few days before they reach Winterfell he hears the men talking by the fire. They have drank too much and they are talking with raised voices and laughing louder than usual. For a moment he thinks of days with Tyrion when they were younger and then shoves them away as fast as they came.

                Those days are long gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bare with me guys. Jamie will get better with time. And I promise I will explain what happened to Brienne a little better later.


	3. Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A set of shorts from Jamie's perspective as he is exiled to Winterfell by the Dragon Queen and his relationship with Sansa Stark while he helps her deal with her past as he comes to terms with his.

                Sansa greets them in the courtyard. She wears a woolen outer dress in the palest color of blue. It would appear to be white, he thinks, in the afternoon sun. It is near evening now though and the sun is setting. The light of the day is lasting longer now, and while it is cold now, there is no snow, and it will be gone before long. The pink and the blood red of the sky is a fitting backdrop for her hair. It is loose, and hangs down to her waist, it seems more fitting than the complicated braids they wear in Kingslanding.

                She is more beautiful than Cersei ever was.

                For a moment he wonders what her hair would look like spread across a pillow, and then he feels sick. They will not be real, and she twenty years younger than him.

                She is so very beautiful, but when he looks into her eyes, they are even more dead than the bastards. Blue pools of nothing. Jamie wonders if she doesn't show her emotions because she was taught not to, or if she no longer has them. He has heard the tales of her time with Littlefinger, and of his death.

                "Ser Jaime." She does not curtsey or bow her head, as most would in greeting. She only looks him in the eye, so different than the blushing polite little girl he remembers, but if he is honest with himself he barely remembers her. He paid her no mind, even when he learned his son would marry her. Just another young chirping girl, like all the others.

                "My Lady." He inclines his head to her as he dismounts his horse, before walking up to her and giving a proper bow.

                He takes in the Tyrell boy at her side as well as Tyrion's old squire.

                The burns on the former flower are not near as bad as he had been lead to believe. His features are much the same, but his head is shaved. The skin is puckered in some areas, pink and raw but healed. They remind him of the minor burns that some cooks would have on the inside of their arms, puckered pink and angry looking, but not the horror that was once the Hound. The worst of it is on the right side of his face where he is missing the top of his ear, and the skin around that jaw seems tighter than the rest.

                Podrick, if he remembers his name correctly has grown since Jamie last saw him. Sansa is a tall woman, but she seems small and feminine next to Payne. Jamie knows the boy is younger than Sansa, but he looks a few years older. His shoulders are broad and his posture is stiff. Nothing like the child that Jamie remembers. He remembers the last time he saw him and the boy seems to know what he is thinking because he looks down sharply.

                Brienne's death is hanging in the air between them, and Jamie forces his eyes back up to his future wife.

                He wonders if he catches it. A moment. Just a moment, of what seemed to be concern as she looks at Podrick beside her, before it is gone. Her face cracks and puts itself together just as quickly when she turns to look at him.

                "Welcome to Winterfell Ser, I believe we have some things to discuss." He reminds himself of her age again, as it is easy to forget, by her mannerisms that she is still but a young woman. Not even twenty years.

                "Yes, my lady." He replies watching her eyes for any sign of the earlier change, and receives nothing, before she turns away in a whirl of skirts and leads the way inside.


	4. Musings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A set of shorts from Jamie's perspective as he is exiled to Winterfell by the Dragon Queen and his relationship with Sansa Stark while he helps her deal with her past as he comes to terms with his.

                She will not be taking his name, and their children will be Starks. That is if they ever have any. He suspects they won't.

                The rest of the list of rules on the paper from the Dragon Queen seems to go on, all things about what he is entitled to do in his new role as Lord of Winterfell. The list is more things he cannot do really though.

                Sansa is the leader of Winterfell, he is merely there as a stud horse. One that won't be getting any use.

                They will be married in a week. He has already been there for two, and is already feeling antsy. Though less broken than before. Less haunted. He supposes he has Podrick to thank for that.

                He makes his way down to the yard to practice with a dummy before going against the guard.

                Every day that Payne is not on duty they spend in the yard. Jamie is better than him, but only barely. And not better than Loras or Jon. It irks him to no end that he is still not as good with his left hand as he was his right. He would have beaten them all multiple times over by now, except perhaps Snow, who never seems to get tired or winded, and stays in the yard hacking at dummies hours after everyone has retired.

                They practice in shifts, and guard in shifts. Jon, then Loras, then Podrick, and the pattern goes on. Jamie finds the days that Jon is with Sansa the easiest. Podrick and he have found some sort of understanding with one another without words. They both blame each other, and they both know there is almost nothing they could have done. They don't speak about it. Jamie knows he never will.

                They beat one another in the yard until they are sore and bruised and barely standing.

                Depending on the day they go to sleep and wake up only to do it all over again.

                And little by little Jamie feels better, more alive.

                Loras does not protest, only steps in when something gets too much for the other to handle, and each time Jamie's pride stings when it is himself that needs the saving.

                When Jon is in the yard it is something all together different.

                The large white direwolf, aptly named Ghost, prowls the edge of the yard in the early morning hours, and while Jamie didn't particularly find the undead Snow particularly frightening at first glance, there is a sort of terror that runs through him when those red eyes are watching him. The animal is too quiet, and Jamie can almost always feel his eyes on him before the wolf makes himself visible.

                Snow plays with them. All of them. He is not nearly as skilled as Loras or Jamie, was never a knight, never received that quality of training. But he has instinct, and while Jamie and Loras grow tired Snow presses on.

                No one has yet to tell him that story. He suspects that it is something that he will have to earn. A long with the story of Sansa's third husband that everyone still has yet to speak about in his presence. In fact they speak of Sansa very little around him.

                He has only spoken to her on four separate occasions since their first meeting. The first being a somewhat formal tour of Winterfell, and to inform him that while he was a Lannister and an exile he was not a prisoner. He could go where he pleased when he pleased as long as he did not try to rile up her men.

                The second was to give him new clothing. Things warmer than what he had to get him through the end of winter, and then a few lighter things for spring and summer, all of them still warmer than most of the things he ever had need to own.  She didn't say so, but Jamie suspects that she made them herself. The gold lion embroidered on shades of black and grey (never red) are too fine and he knows there are not the people skilled to do so in Wintertown, which is currently made up of men from the war and wildlings.

                The third was an accident. He had been seething about losing a match with Loras when he ran directly into the Lady Stark while she was walking out of the door and heading to the Godswood with Snow. He had caught her before she fell, but with the golden handed arm and winced. If looks could kill Jamie would have burned from the glare that Jon Snow was showering him with at that exact moment, but he became distracted when Sansa had grabbed his arm and pulled up his sleeve sharply, not shying away from his disfiguration. The muscle there was atrophying as he no longer had a fist to flex and a well aimed blow in practice had left him a bruise that blackened faster than to be expected. She said nothing before pushing the sleeve back down and walking away, but a portly Maester, who Jamie learned to be a Tarly visited him that night.  

                The fourth was two days ago, when she burst into his room barely a few minutes after he had woken up. He had already shaved, but his golden hand lay on his nightstand across the room, and he had started toward it at her knock, but Sansa had not waited for him to answer but had opened the door instead with a bundle of cloth under her arm. She took note of the stump at the end of his right arm, but said nothing, and seemed not to care before she marched over to him and held the grey velvet cloth up to him gauging it against him. Tucked into it was a piece of blood red velvet that she also held up before tucking that away too and pulling out a tape to measure him with.

                She had taken a hold of his stump and measured him from shoulder to end before he could react and he stood still, shocked by the barely there sensation of fingers on his ruined wrist. It was the first time she had touched him.

                She took the rest of his measurements without saying a word before she had started back out the door when she turned and stopped to look at him.

                "I can't wear a Lannister cloak Ser, nor would I want to."

                "I understand, my lady." And he had really. Marrying him probably already felt like a betrayal, wearing his colors would only make it more real. And she had already worn a Lannister cloak once in a forced marriage.

                "I can't even dress you in your house colors completely. The north wants a Stark, but I will try to make something that is fitting of your station." She had looked him in the eyes. Watching his face. Looking for some sort of approval.

                Or perhaps she had been looking for a sign that he did not hate it here. That he won't hate it here. That same caring came out again for a few seconds. Not love, not even friendliness. He had been broken, and he wondered only the people here in Winterfell can understand that sort of thing. The slow putting back of the pieces. The undead not bastard, the burned flower who lost his love and his house, the boy who never had much of anything, and the thrice married Queen in the North. The last Stark. The lone wolf.

                He nodded his understanding and she whooshed down the hall without another word.

                He has only seen her in passing since.

                The practice dummy in front of him will need to be replaced.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been an idea running through my head for a while. I am a firm SanSan fan but once I got this idea in my head I couldn't get it out. Hopefully it turns out how I envisioned it.


End file.
